MCCXXIII Is Closed

By
Fritz Hahn

The club MCCXXIII, known as 1223, has closed its doors after a decade on the popular Connecticut Avenue strip north of M Street. "In short, we were there for 10 years, the lease was up and the new fair-market value of what the rent should be was a lot higher than we could afford," says David Karim, one of the partners who ran MCCXXIII. "Being an old club, we have to move on."

The situation may sound familiar to former fans of Red, the nightspot that closed under similar circumstances when its lease was up in 2005. (That space is now home to Fly.)

MCCXXIII was one of Washington's first pricey bottle-service clubs, and its upstairs VIP lounge, Spank, was the first local club to jump on the "reserve-a-bed" trend back in 2002. Once known for its upscale international crowds and open-bar weekend happy hours, MCCXXIII in recent years has been outpaced by upstarts like Josephine, in which Karim is also a partner.

With the closing, MCCXXIII's weekly parties have moved on to other nightspots: Saturday nights, run by DCNites, has moved to Muse Lounge, while the Nightlife Agency's popular Friday party is now at Eyebar.

D.C. clubs have been on this downhill trend. ESL (which I used to go to since it opened) is now a haven for meat heads. FLY replaced one of the best dance spots there was *sigh* Now sucky clubs will just be replaced by even suckier clubs.